Free Cell

Description

The second volume of our City Lights Spotlight Poetry series, Free Cell is the latest book of poems from New York-based poet Anselm Berrigan, one of the most influential American poets under the age of forty. In a departure from his previous work, Free Cell consists of two experimental suites, "Have a Good One" and "To Hell with Sleep," connected by a central poem. The former director of St. Mark's Poetry Project, Anselm Berrigan is the son of poets Ted Berrigan and Alice Notley. He is the poetry editor of The Brooklyn Rail and the co-editor of The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan.

Anselm Berrigan's most recent book is Some Notes on My Programming. The poetry editor of The Brooklyn Rail, co-editor with Alice Notley and Edmund Berrigan of The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (2005, UCal Press), and former Director of St. Marks Poetry Project, Berrigan teaches at Pratt Institute and Wesleyan, and the Milton Avery Graduate School.

For "The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan," edited by Anselm and Edmund Berrigan and Alice Notley: "a major volume of 20th-century American poetry, bringing together everything Berrigan (1934-1983) would or could have published. Berrigan's second wife, and their two sons (both poets) have meticulously re-edited Berrigan's books--he took the book as a real unit of composition--incorporating late drafts and fixes, and carefully re-formatting his very intentionally spaced open field verse." - Publishers Weekly